DaMatta revisited

Abstract

Roberto DaMatta famously argues that in the Brazilian cultural universe stable moral codes buttress familial hierarchy in the house, while situational negotiations underscore egalitarian utopias in the street. In this article, I revise this analytic construct, which a priori assumes that the person of the house and the “individual” of the street are mutually exclusive social categories. Rather than polarize house and street as distinct cultural domains diametrically opposed to one another, I demonstrate ethnographically that houses in the Brazilian state of Maranhão are conceptually continuous with the street to varying degrees. I argue that moral indebtedness in both these domains locally manifests through the emotional economies of respect (respeito), by which persons/individuals introduce measures of emotional proximity or distance into various types of material exchange relations. Both men and women ultimately channel these types of relations into the space of their family houses, which thus become hubs for the circulation of core social values.

Keywords:

• house
• respect
• kinship
• Brazil
• Roberto DaMatta

Notes

1. This refers to a hypothetical situation in which a policeman attempts to impose the authority of the egalitarian civilian order on a person that nevertheless reinstates his/her personal status in ways that destroy this authority.

2. The state of Maranhão is located in the geopolitical division between Northeast and North Brazil, bordering from east to west the states of Piauí, Tocantins, and Pará. In 2007–2008, I conducted a six-month study focused on the sociality of kinship relations in the state capital São Luís, living in a low-income neighborhood I fictionally call Santo Amaro. In 2009–2010, I conducted 14 months of fieldwork living in the same neighborhood and a comparative study in a remote village located about 450 kilometers into the hinterland, which I fictionally call Guanabara.

3. Maya Mayblin (2010: 44) reports that in the past, morally correct forms of cross-generational relations in Northeast Brazil even included averting one’s eyes in the presence of one’s elders.

4. Across Brazil, similar modes of emotional relatedness underscore a wide range of structurally dissimilar social relations (Rebhun 1999; Hautzinger 2007). This includes co-father/motherhood (compadre/comadres), brothers/sisters by “co-nurture” (irmão/irmã de criação), and “children by nurture” (filho de criação). These forms of associations almost always include the transaction of money, food, bestowals, and favors (Fonseca 2003).

5. Weber (1978) builds his theory of value on the assumption that mutually exclusive cultural domains (or spheres) produce contrasting values that contest one another. Impersonal norms and rules governing state bureaucracy, for example, contradict the personalized relations of traditional village life.

6. I am not interested in the socioeconomic and political implications of power asymmetry in Brazil but rather in the mundane manifestation of ethics and intimacy as they shape interpersonal relations. Although at times respect is derivative of status and rank, I do not think it is merely a whitewash for inequalities. See also Cândido (1970).

7. This goes back to the colonial plantations, where slaves who did not demonstrate deferral were publicly beaten.

8. When younger or subordinate members approach elder members of the extended family and ask for their blessing, the elder would kiss their hand-palm and allow the blessed to kiss his/her own. At times, this also includes touching the top of the blessed person’s head. Then, the elder would impart a formula of blessing, most commonly saying “stay with God” (fica com Deus).

9. At the time of our conversation in 2010, the pregnant sister was 18 years old, single, and still living with their mother. The two brothers with whom Danilo had cut all contacts were on their way to delinquency.

10. Older people in the region today still use the expression “revealed herself” to indicate loss of virginity.

11. According to Seu Sansão, he had set up Seu Francisco and his sons with a construction project. He supplied accommodation for its duration as well as three meals a day. “All it lacked was that I arrange women for them,” he told me. The next time he employed Seu Francisco and his sons, however, Seu Sansão did not supply such luxuries. This allegedly resulted in Seu Francisco reclaiming these benefits from Seu Sansão and later gossiping about him.

12. Cognatic kinship is a bilateral descent system traced through both the father and the mother.

13. DaMatta claims that respect is confined into the space of the house: “…In the house relations are ruled by the “natural” hierarchies of sex and age, precedence going to males and the older; in the street it often takes some effort in localizing such hierarchies because people can be classified by many different criteria. In this way, although both domains should be governed by a hierarchy based on respeito e consideração (respect and consideration), the latter being a fundamental relational concept of the Brazilian social world, this basic concept is above all characteristic of the relationship between parents and children…” (1991: 64, 65, italics mine).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Matan Shapiro

Matan Shapiro completed his PhD in Social Anthropology at University College London (UCL) in 2013. Today (2016), he is a postdoctoral fellow at the Kreitman Institute for Advanced Studies and Teaching Fellow in the Sociology and Anthropology Department at Ben-Gurion University, Israel. He is the author of several publications on ritual, play, intimacy, and the sociality of kinship in Northeast Brazil. His current research focuses on Pentecostal pilgrimage from Brazil to the Holy Land.

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